Four days after the opening ceremony, all but the last day of preliminary rounds of the World Schools Debating Championship behind me, I was sitting on a bus headed to another hosting school, but this time it was in the Khayelitsha township. As we drove along the highway, the monumental mountains on one side contrasted starkly with the run-down corrugated iron shacks on the other. It was exactly what I was told to expect, exactly the shock I was prepared for in any country poorer than my own. However, the main surprise was yet to come. Nice setting of the scene.
I stepped inside and looked at the large auditorium. Students shuffling around in their blue uniforms, chatting and giggling in the corridor during, even the profanities scribbled on the door of the bathroom stalls, all that I could encounter back home. I was never told there would be ordinary people there! “There” too many times… Then the principal, a tall, authoritative figure with a caring glance, gives a speech in a thick Bantu accent before the assembled debaters. The sentence sounds a bit strange when starting with the word “then”. Even though I could hardly make out the words, I understood the message he was conveying. He was affirming the realization that had come to me: everyone there was completely normal, and they did not need our help. “There” again, and I am not sure if the statement that they don’t need our help isn’t too strong.
Before the debates started, there was a demonstration of a native dance. In the first row of the group of students was a girl, dancing and playing a small ankle-worn drum. Was the little girl from the slum perhaps feeling about her nationality